The ongoing Political Musings of a former (now Stray) Yellar Dawg Dem.
***Warning***
This is a Feminist Blog, in the tradition of Susan B. Anthony.

"Just Tell Them...

I have worked 40 years to make the Women's Suffrage platform broad enough for Atheists and Agnostics to stand upon, and now if need be I will fight the next 40 to keep it Catholic enough to permit the straightest Orthodox religionist to speak or pray and count her beads upon."

Susan B. Anthony

Wednesday, June 17, 2009

When is an Apology not an Apology? Dave's War on Working Women and Harriet Christian's Response.

I read Jenn Q. Public's excellent rant at Afrocity's blog yesterday. It's profound. It even borders on "life changing." For a former "Liberal" like me, at least.

Honestly, folks. I never meant to look down upon my roots. I never planned to abandon the ideals of my small business owning grandparents, or my blue collar daddy. My wish for the party with which I affiliated myself was simple inclusiveness. I wanted to be part of the fight for civil rights. And worker rights. And women's rights. And gay rights. "The Big tent" as they say.

A not so funny thing happened while I was off fighting for the various and assundry rights that I still believe in, however. The people I was fighting to defend, turned on me. The party of my blue collar daddy was taken over by "the entitled ones." You know, like David Letterman:

What gives Dave Letterman license to repeatedly troll the gutter without ever dirtying his Worldwide Pants?

Liberalism.

Didn’t you realize? He can’t be sexist, he’s a liberal. He’s no misogynist – he votes Democrat. Like all liberals, Dave will tell you he loves women. He respects them. Isn’t he pro-choice? Isn’t he sufficiently appalled by breast cancer? Doesn’t he joke all the time about those brutish southerners who beat their wives with Confederate flags? Haven’t you heard? He’s a card carrying liberal. Liberal, I tell you. Liberal!

Among his liberal buddies, Letterman can get away with pretending that he intended to insult Sarah Palin’s 18-year-old daughter Bristol, not her younger child Willow. But Willow was at the ballgame, Bristol was thousands of miles away, and Letterman is the skeevy guy in dress shoes and a tan trench coat who bares it all to a 14-year-old girl on the subway, then swears to the cops, “But I thought she was 18,” as he’s being hauled off to jail.

“Look at my record,” Dave told his audience as he clarified his remarks about Willow. What he means is he’s on record as being liberal. He knows the secret handshake and everything! And as we all know, liberal men are inherently sensitive to sexism in our society.

Yes. I admit it. Jenn Q. Public is talking about *me.* The old, unenlightened, me. The me that existed until I saw the brutal male supremacy unleashed on Hillary Rodham Clinton in 2008. At one time, I would have bought Dave's argument. With little skepticism. No more! Now I'm an outright cynic.

I’m going to have to respectfully disagree with Allahpundit that his Letterman quote includes an apology. It does not. It includes a post-modern faux apology: “sorry that you rubes misunderstood the joke, which I at least now admit wasn’t funny. To you. Obviously a good portion of my audience enjoyed it immensely and clearly understood it, especially when I non-apologized a couple of days ago. I’ll be more humble this time and see if it flies, so I don’t lose any more sponsors. As a responsible adult I want you to know I did take the time to check and see if that Palin kid was over 18 before I called her a tramp. Because that’s the kind of guy I am, and, again, it’s not your fault that it was misunderstood, it’s my fault. That it was misunderstood. The important thing is that unlike Imus, I’m a liberal who means well, so I deserve a pass for anything I say that is offensive.”

I don't like being cynical. Really I don't. But, Dave's condescension is glaring. It is really because they are stupid, ya know. Those working class sluts that serve cocktails on your two am flight home from Honolulu. They don't "get" Dave's jokes. They don't know the secret handshake, uh... er... fistbump.

Well here's some news for my former "Liberal" allies:

I know the secret handshake.

But, I still ain't buyin'.

And Neither is PUMA, Harriet Christian....

SYD

PS. The idiot interviewing Harriet clearly does not know who she is. He believes she is a Conservative Republican.. and he tries to trip her up about RW talk's part in the Tiller murder. It's priceless to watch him make a fool of himself.

3 comments:

His staff writes an attack on a 14 yr old girl. It offends numerous people.

They take a few days to come up with the rationalization that he meant to encourage an attack on the 18 yr old (who had a child out of wedlock & therefore must be a slut, right ?) vs 14 yr old. This still annoys people.

After being told by Mark Shields (& NOW & Gov Palin who don't count because they are icky girls) that statements about statutory rape aren't funny, Letterman's staff comes up with the rationalization that he wasn't joking about ANY of the girls. He didn't know that any of Palin's daughters were actually at the baseball game. So, why did his staff write an alleged joke about these non-existent daughters be attacked at the game? He's completely illogical, but I suppose the MSM wants to ignore this issue & make it go away....

SYD, I followed your link from the comments at The New Agenda and was so pleasantly surprised to see that you had written about my piece on Letterman. I think "profound" and "life changing" are the absolute nicest things anyone has ever written about one of my pieces. I may have to add a testimonials section to my blog. Thank you!

I'm a recovered lefty as well. I think knowing the "secret handshake" gives us a bit of extra insight into this mockery of true liberal ideals.

Amblings of a Stray

Where In The World Is ....

In "real life" Dawg is a mom, a nurse, a pet rescuer and a tireless advocate for animal rights.
Dawg is happily married for thirty years and has raised three awesome children. She holds an advanced degree in Family Science, wherein her research was focused on women's support circles during parturition. Her dedication to Women's Rights is directly affected by her belief that motherhood should not be a sentence to isolation and disenfranchisement.
Dawg is on hiatus from political bloggery d/t the intense demands of her engagement in the No Kill movement at this time. However, she remains influenced by PUMA politics and reads the blogs of her fellow PUMAs (at right) regularly.

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"Sooner or later we all discover that the important moments in life are not the advertised ones, not the birthdays, the graduations, the weddings, not the great goals achieved. The real milestones are less prepossessing. They come to the door of memory unannounced, stray dogs that amble in, sniff around a bit and simply never leave.